Re: Seed trouble

From: SelbyHort at aol.com on 2000.02.27 at 04:04:49(4117) Shipping seeds takes some thought, (not much really) but you must have some awareness of the massive machines that are used for processing mail. When I shipped out aroid seeds recently, I first wrapped them in dampened newspaper (ala Tom Croat style...it works!) then put the damp packette inside a small zip lock bag. The whole thing next went into a small cardboard box, the size used to pack cassette tapes for mailing. Since you can still possibly crush the box by standing on it (this is my test for the mails), I decided to sandwich the small box between pieces of corrugate and rubber band it all together. It looked pretty ugly at this point, but once inside padded envelopes, the seeds were pretty secure and protected. Using the small cassette boxes was a good way to keep the package compressed enough to go into a small envelope. This even fits inside the small letter rate Global Express Mail envelope used by the USPS ($5 to anywhere in the world air mail - guaranteed delivery in 5 working days...this has got to be the best postal deal anywhere), and avoids any complications such as customs declarations on larger parcels. +More Just one way to do it, there are surely others. Donna Atwood << Mine came in a padded envelope but I think they passed it through a metal roller! Perhaps it is time to go to thin boxes? or stamp them "hand cancel" (which let's the postal people know there is something worth taking inside the envelope :-) At 02:52 PM 02/22/2000 -0600, you wrote: >To all recipients of smashed Amorphophallus muelleri seeds, > > > >Folks, I am truely sorry this happened again. I shall clobber the Leiden > >people severely and order them to buy and use padded envelopes. I am shocked > >they didn't use it. It seems the least for a professional seed-distributing > >institution. Sorry, sorry. >>

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